Over You

by Cole, Stevie J.

  “The question should be, why do you choose to date the crazy ones? We aren’t all psychotic.”

  “Do I have a flashing beacon that attracts the unstable variety?”

  “Yes. It’s your arrogance.” I used the toe of my shoe to kick out the chair across the table and then nodded to the empty seat. “Stop lording over me, would you?”

  “Lording over you . . .” He rolled his eyes before slumping in the chair to take a sip of his drink. He licked his lips, a slight smile tugging the corners. “You knew I’d had a shit day?”

  “You’ve had nothing but shit days since you broke up with Kirby. So, go ahead and tell me what she did this time.”

  “She’s mental, Georgia.”

  “Yes. But to be fair, that was made clear to you after date number two when she had you stop by the petrol station so she could jab a pocket knife in her ex-boyfriend’s tire.” I grabbed my spoon and drew designs through the melting whipped cream in my coffee.

  “I just thought she hated him.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  He tapped a finger over the tabletop. “If you would have dated me when I asked you out, this wouldn’t be happening to me.”

  “Oh no. Don’t try to blame me for this.”

  “You shattered my ego, and I had to turn to the likes of her for comfort.”

  I glared at him. Tom was that guy. The one who had girls chasing him, but he liked to chase the girls who weren’t interested. Like me. . . He had asked me out religiously. And I had unfailingly turned him down—I was, after all, still technically married, although no one here knew that. Then he met Kirby.

  “Are you going to tell me what she did or not? The suspense is almost too much, Tom.” I tapped the spoon on the edge of my cup, my tone dry as a bone.

  “She put dog shit on the door handle of my car.”

  “Dog crap?” I took a sip of coffee. “Are you sure it wasn’t human feces?”

  Tom’s elbows banged on the table, and he placed his head in his hands, then shook his head. “Why am I friends with you?”

  “It’s my accent.” I kicked at him under the table. “Get your books out so we can study.”

  He grumbled before dragging his backpack to his lap and unloading his notebook. “Is Lottie not coming?”

  A crash sounded from a chair toppling over. “Wanker!”

  “What in the hell is she wearing?” Tom muttered.

  My gaze went to the side of the café. Lottie stood in cotton candy pink tights, a checkered skirt, and a frilly white blouse, trying to untangle her shopping bags from one of the chairs.

  “She has her own sense of style, Tom. This is nothing new.”

  Lottie finally freed herself, then made a beeline toward our table.

  “Wow, don’t you look fit?” I said, giving her a once over before bringing the warm mug to my mouth.

  “Check you catching on to British slang. And it only took you half a year.”

  She dropped the bags to the warbled, hardwood floor before she pulled out a chair. The second she’d scooted to the table, she brushed her windblown, coal-black hair from her face.

  “You look lovely,” Tom stifled a laugh, and Lottie shot daggers at him.

  “You best be glad you’re pretty Tom Perry, or I’d have none of you.” Her gaze fell to my open textbook. “Humphrey’s class is the worst. I hate that dodgy bastard and his Oxford comma obsession.”

  “You think everyone’s a dodgy bastard.” I nodded toward the heap of bags. “What’s with the shopping?”

  “They announced a surprise guest at Glastonbury.” Excitement bubbled from her voice while my lip curled in a sneer.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to that wankfest?” Tom’s gaze strayed to a group of girls at the corner table. He leaned back in his seat, striking a suave, Casanova pose when the blonde threw a glance in his direction.

  “Of course I am.” Lottie slapped a hand over the table, causing the drinks to rattle. “Glastonbury is the mother of all rock shows.”

  “It sucks,” Tom said.

  “Have you ever been?”

  “Yeah. It’s Woodstock without all the LSD and naked people. The smell of fermented beer and piss mixed with the pungent aroma of weed takes weeks to wash off.”

  “You’re a knob,” Lottie waved a dismissive hand through the air. “You wouldn’t know good music if it gave you head.”

  “Piss off, Lottie.”

  While most of England may have been chomping at the bit for a ticket to the sold-out event, I had no desire to go. As far as I was concerned, rock shows were a warzone, and my heart was the first causality. I knew all too well what the life of those rock gods Lottie and everyone else idolized was about, and I had no desire for the reminder.

  “Guess who it is. Just guess!” She beamed like a radioactive Rock n’ Roll Barbie.

  I swallowed the acid bubbling in my throat. Refusing to rain on Lottie’s parade, I played along. “Um, Asher’s Coffin?” God, they were assholes. I dumped a scoop of sugar into my too-stout coffee and stirred.

  “No.”

  “Pandemic Sorrow.” Super-arrogant, womanizing, relationship-killing assholes.

  Lottie’s brow wrinkled. “No, Jag’s in rehab.”

  Of course he is. Again. Dick.

  “Midnite Kills!” she squealed.

  Coffee splattered the pages of Faustus when I choked on my drink.

  Lottie had quickly become my closest friend. She was hilarious, kind and caring. However, she had one fatal flaw: she’d recently fallen in love with my soon-to-be ex-husband. Who, to her defense, she had no idea I knew.

  We had bonded on the train, and she had offered to show me around her town. Six months later, I was still here, renting her spare room because Salisbury was nothing like Beverly Hills, and Lottie was about as far away from pill-popping socialites as I could get. And while I had told her about Spencer, I had neglected to tell her exactly who he was.

  “Oh, God. Are you okay?” She handed me a wad of paper napkins while I rubbed at my throat and nodded.

  “Wrong pipe.”

  “It’s alright, Georgia.” Tom patted my back. “They make me sick too. Bunch of eye-liner-wearing dildos.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Lottie said, then directed her gaze back at me. “Can you believe it?” She swooned. “Spencer Hailstorm, Georgia!”

  My heart flip-flopped. Much to my dismay, his name still got to me. Bad. A mixture of hate and regret sprinkled with a little bit of worry.

  Lottie clasped her hands underneath her chin. Lust fogged her brown eyes. “Can you imagine being close enough to touch him?”

  How I wished I couldn’t. “Nope. Sure can’t.”

  Tom’s chair scraped over the floor. “Be right back.” He started toward the booth of girls he’d been gawking at, and they, of course, scooted over to make room.

  Lottie took a sip of tea with a roll of her eyes. “He’s such a tosser.”

  While Lottie went on about the show and how much she loved Spencer, my mind wandered, and I found myself focusing on the coffee mug clutched in my grasp at the thought of how perfect Spencer’s fingers felt digging into my waist. How raspy his voice was when he whispered, “I love you” while buried inside me. Stop. When I walked away, he wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t. . . And it didn’t matter because that pull in my stomach was hate, not yearning. I was over Spencer Hailstorm. Indefinitely, assuredly over him.

  “I’m trying to decide between two outfits.” Lottie grabbed one of the bags from the floor and unloaded a pair of jeans, two blouses, some lime-green leggings, and the last thing she pulled out was a shiny, new copy of Rolling Stone. Spencer front and center.

  “Maybe it’s in the other bag.” She leaned over to rummage through sacks while I grabbed the magazine.

  Thick, black eyeliner rimmed Spencer’s storm-cloud eyes. Specks of gray and green embedded within the blue popped thanks to HD photography. The scar that ran across the bridge of his nose had be
en erased in edits, and for some reason, that bothered me.

  Five years ago, he and I were in a rundown bar on the outskirts of Van Nuys. An old, leather-vested motorcycle guy slapped my ass when I passed his table and then made a show of asking me to suck his dick. Before I could flip him the bird, Spencer had popped the biker in the mouth with his fist, punched him in the eye, and then took a beer bottle and smashed it over the guy’s skull.

  We had made it three feet from the door before Biker Bob caught up to us and returned the sentiment.

  One ER visit we couldn’t afford and seven stitches later. . . And the editor had just deleted that part of our history like it had never existed.

  “He’s a babe, isn’t he?” Lottie ripped the price tag from a lace top.

  I gave an absent nod, already flipping to page sixteen to see what the article titled: The Legend of a Rock God was about.

  I got one paragraph in before my chest tightened. Never adopted. Never accepted. Entirely unwanted until fame found me.

  He used to tell me he was unwanted until he found me. . . I placed the magazine face-down on the table. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t even the same person anymore.

  “Okay. So. Faustus. . .”

  9

  Spencer

  The edge of the infinity pool appeared to drop into the valley. The day’s last light cast golden hues over the bright-green palm leaves. Distant rooftops lay hidden behind the haze of California heat while my bare chest baked like an iguana under a heat lamp.

  As a kid growing up in Van Nuys, I had always thought it was shitty how the rich people had their massive, cock-stroking houses perched on this hill. Lording over us. Behold what you will never have. When did I turn into all the things I had once hated? I couldn’t blame her for leaving.

  No matter how I tried to fight it, I thought about her every day. Her and that long, jet-black hair that never behaved the way she wanted. If Georgia Anne wanted it straight, it curled. If she wanted it curled, it went flat. I may have only been nineteen years old when I had spotted her nestled in the corner of the roof where she’d thought the shadows had kept her hidden. But not even darkness could hide beauty like hers. It was like the night trying to hide the dawn—there was a fight, but light always won, just like her beauty.

  My phone buzzed beside me on the lounge. Rays of sun hit the screen, making the incoming number invisible, but I was more than thankful for the distraction, so I swiped the screen. “Yeah?”

  “Spencer?” The woman on the other line didn’t sound pissed enough to be my lawyer, so I had no idea who she was.

  “Who’s this?”

  Silence. “Vicki Dunn.”

  “What outlet are you with? Esquire? MTV?”

  “I don’t know how to say this. . .”

  Flipping my shades over my eyes, I groaned and reclined against the wicker lounge. “Well, figure it out quick. I’m busy.”

  “I’m your mother.”

  For a split-second, it felt like a stone sank into the pit of my stomach. That couldn’t have been true, so I doubled over in laughter. “Was it Nash or Leo that put you up to this?” Those assholes would pay random people on the street to prank call the sperm bank. It would only make sense one of them would find humor in something this tasteless.

  “I read your article in Rolling Stone. I had a sick sense before, from your pictures, but the story about the car seat. . .” She choked back a dramatic sob. “I’ve regretted that every day of my life.”

  The smile fell from my face. Whoever this lady was, she tried to tug on my heartstrings. Good thing those had been blown to smithereens ages ago. “How did you get my number?”

  “A million calls finally landed me with Mickey? Ricky? He said he asked you if I could call?”

  Son-of-a-bitch. By now, I paced beside the pool, watching the toes of my Vans move over the patio pavers. Any leech could have read that article and claimed to have been my mother, but something about her voice felt familiar. I rubbed a hand across the back of my neck. That was ridiculous. Familiar. . . “Look, I don’t—”

  “You have—you might have a scar on the inside of your thigh. If it didn’t fade.”

  That got my attention. I did, indeed, have a small, round scar at the top of my right thigh. Georgia Anne used to tease me and say it was from ringworm.

  “This guy I was friends with, he dropped a cigarette in your car seat. I. . . I was only fourteen. I didn’t know what I was doing with a baby, and you were crying and screaming. I just needed a minute, so I walked out of that bathroom.” She paused, and I stopped pacing.

  The idea of a mother was as foreign to me as Mandarin Chinese. While she’d grown up and most likely become a mom to other kids, I’d never been anyone’s son. She knew what she was missing. I didn’t have the faintest clue, and it’s hard to mourn something you’ve never had.

  “When I came back, you were gone.” She began to weep. “Then I didn’t know what to do.

  Funny. She didn’t think to call the police, but she sure made, as she put it, a million calls to find me now. Twenty-four years too late. Now that she realized that baby she abandoned had made something of himself.

  “I tell you what, Vicki.” I paused, nodding while I made my way back to the lounge. “Send your address or bank account info—whatever you want—to my label. I’ll stroke out a check for your troubles, seeing as how I wouldn’t be where I am had I not been abandoned.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  It didn’t matter. I hung up.

  The patio door opened, and Nash stepped out wearing some ridiculous pink shirt with Pussy Master printed on the front.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s our pre-travel spa day, princess.”

  Flipping my shades over my eyes, I reclined against the wicker lounge with a groan. “I’m not going to a fucking spa.”

  Nash flopped onto the lounge beside me, and the soft chuff of a police helicopter sounded in the distance. “Hey, dude. Do you remember anything from last night after we left The Club?”

  “No.”

  “Me either.” He chuckled.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out an empty baggie, huffing before I tossed it to the ground where the wind caught it. It skipped along the patio pavers like a tumbleweed on a desert plane.

  “Hey.” Nash snapped his fingers. “Wasn’t Danté supposed to meet us at the rub-a-dub place?”

  My ears perked up, and I peered over my shades. Danté was a complete sycophant. A fame-hungry, trust-fund baby. The problem was, Danté was completely without talent. Tone deaf with an upturned nose and bulging eyes that made him look like a pug. The only hope he had for notoriety was rubbing elbows with celebrities. Which was what he did. And since he was the heir to billions—thanks to his dad developing some tech shit for cell phones—he had no problem buying his way into our graces with drugs.

  The lounge creaked under my weight when I snatched up the shirt from the deck and tugged it over my head. “Spa day it is.”

  Lotus Day Spa sat off Rodeo Drive. A typical white building with gold lettering. The luxurious interior had been modeled after the Roman baths, complete with intricate columns and floor-to-ceiling marble. I could practically taste the lavender and vanilla scent puffed out by diffusers. Not a single thing about this place was masculine, which made sense. It catered to the Beverly Hills housewives who had nothing better to do than chase their Vicodin with over-priced champagne before they let Julio rub them down.

  Danté sat all straight-backed with prim posture like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. He’d already changed into a fluffy white robe and the terry-cloth slippers the spa provided.

  “Slackers.” His high-pitched voice echoed through the vaulted atrium, catching the attention of several women. He stood and tapped his watchless wrist. “Veronica’s shift is gonna be over in an hour. And she gives the best under the table massages.” His thin lips quirked into a sleazy grin before he grabbed at the sleeve of Nash’s
shirt. “Pussy Master,” he chuckled. “Killer shirt, bro.”

  Nash gave him a fist bump, but I shoved my hands into my pockets. I tried to avoid skin-to-skin contact with Danté at all costs. He looked like the type of guy who would take a steamer, and forego washing his hands because he thought his shit didn’t stink.

  “Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the pussy this morning.” Danté gripped my shoulder and squeezed.

  “Man,” I swatted him away. “Don’t touch me.”

  Nash leaned in. “He’s a little testy. I think it’s a back-up of jizz.”

  “That shit’ll kill you.” Danté cocked a brow on his way past me.

  Nash and I followed him across the lobby and into the men’s locker room where he grabbed his gym bag from a locker. He rummaged around for a second, then pulled out a baggie of powder. “I call it Danté’s Inferno.” His bug-eyes gleamed.

  Nash snatched it from him and held it up to the light, inspecting it. “What’s in it?”

  Danté waved his hand around like a magician preparing to pull a rabbit from a shiny top hat. “Magic.”

  That was enough for me. I took the bag, dumped some of the contents out, and got my fix before changing into one of the robes. Minutes ticked by, and I hadn’t experienced the first muscle twitch or the slightest increase in heart rate. So I did another line.

  “Take it easy, bro. That’s hard stuff.”

  I flipped Danté the bird and took one more hit. “I’m seasoned at this.”

  “Whatever, man.”

  Ten minutes later, my sweaty balls were plastered to a massage table while a blonde named Natalie rubbed my shoulders.

  New Age music played in the background. Incense swirled around the open room, and I still didn’t feel the least bit high. Danté laid across his massage table, eyes glazed over, tongue hanging out while a girl kneaded his meaty back. He was half-baked, and I was stone-cold sober. “Danté, I think your inferno crap is bunk.”